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The Horizon 2020 funded project Net Market Fluidics (http://netmarketfluidics.eu/) has selected Dr Brian Miller of uFraction8 () as the winner of its first Pilot Project Competition for his entry .

The Pilot Project Competition was launched by Net Market Fluidics to help people in industry and academia develop innovative projects in micro or nano fluidics that would promote collaboration, help advance the state of the art and to create new market opportunities for the technology in the market.

Dr Miller’s entry focused upon new disruptive technology being developed by uFraction8, a spin-out from Heriot Watt University in Scotland. The uFraction8 technology has application in liquid particle processing areas and provides superior performance and cost savings in comparison with current solutions such as filtration, flow centrifugation and flocculation. With the potential to recover particles by size at high degrees of accuracy and maintaining high flow rates, the uFraction8 technology can also be scaled for use in a wide variety of sectors including bioreactor dewatering, ballast water treatment and water monitoring. The technology has also been shortlisted for the Akzo Nobel Imagine Chemistry 2017 competition.

Net Market Fluidics Coordinator Dr Sara Manzano from ADItech says, “The judges had a difficult task in selecting a winner from a number of highly competitive entries. We felt that Dr Miller’s technology has real potential to break into the market and highlight how micro fluidics can move from the laboratory into real-world application. As part of the prize, Net Market Fludics and its partners will help Dr Miller and uFraction8 in identifying potential collaborations and provide guidance to help develop the technology to be market ready.”

Dr Brian Miller of uFraction8 says “I am grateful for the opportunity that winning the first Net Market Fluidics Pilot Project Competition will give me. The technology that we have developed can offer true costs savings in a number of applications and with help from the Net Market Fluidics partners, I hope to be able to explore some new collaborations to help take this technology to the market.”

As part of the prize package, Net Market Fluidics will work with Dr Miller and uFraction8 to help develop new collaborations for the company to help in both developing the technology and bringing it to the attention of potential investors and customers.

About Net Market Fluidics

Net Market Fluidics (http://netmarketfluidics.eu/) is a market approach project for tackling the bottlenecks preventing the deployment of micro and nanofluidics in Europe. The creation of a European network with the main research groups working on these lines allows researchers to better analyze the main challenges for micro and nanofluidics applications (system integration, manufacturability and affordability) and tackle the bottlenecks preventing its market deployment in Europe.

In the network, researchers share knowledge and overcome the technological limitations through different actions: workshops, meetings, groups of experts and white papers. Industrial end users of micro and nano fluidics technologies work with Net Market Fluidics through working groups addressing industrial needs, value chain, technical challenges and standardisation and in sectoral workshops where research centers match their capacities to industrial needs.

The Net Market Fluidics project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement 685775.

About uFraction8

uFraction8 (http://ufraction8.com/) was incorporated in April 2017 as a spin-out company from the Scottish Heriot Watt University. Based upon technology originated by Dr Brian Miller as part of his PhD at the University of Edinburgh and developed during his Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellowship at Heriot Watt, the company has received £70,000 (€82,000) in pre-seed investment from Deep Science Ventures. Dr Miller and his co-founder, Dr Monike Tomecka are both working full-time to develop this technology and take it to market in a number of sectors where it has the potential to make cost savings against existing solutions. uFraction8 is currently looking for collaborations with researchers and industry to test its current small-scale prototype and to scale this up for use in different application areas.

Photos of Dr Miller with his winner’s certificate and images of the technology are available on request. To arrange to interview Dr Miller or to speak with him about possible collaborations, please contact the project coordinator of the Net Market Fluidics project (europa@aditechcorp.com).

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement 685775